


Wheatley's Nights at Freddy's

by BabyCharmander



Category: Five Nights at Freddy's, Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Animatronics, Gen, Horror, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-28
Updated: 2015-02-13
Packaged: 2018-02-15 02:50:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2212923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BabyCharmander/pseuds/BabyCharmander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a desperate attempt to escape being punished by GLaDOS, Wheatley begs for a job, but the job he gets isn't exactly what he was expecting. Now he must survive an unknown number of nights at a part of Aperture that has, for many years, lied dormant. But its inhabitants have been waiting...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Introduction

It was amazing, really, how quickly Wheatley could regret a decision.

One moment he was in space, wishing he were back “home” in the facility—where things weren’t boring, where he could move, where he could get away from defective cores rambling endlessly about space…

And the next moment (or what felt like it, anyway) he was back in the facility, immediately wishing he _hadn’t_ wished that he was away from space—where gravity wasn’t in effect, where he was safe, where there wasn’t a murderous AI looking to enact revenge on him.

The AI in question was currently faced away from him, but that didn’t make things much better. For while she studied a panel on the far side of the room, she was holding him in a claw, tossing him into the air, and catching him, repeating the cycle over and over again. After his initial panic had subsided, he soon realized that GLaDOS had no intentions of dropping him—rather, she was simply tossing him around as one would a ball while one was thinking.

Not exactly a comforting thought.

Still, he tried to talk it off, as he would anything else.

“So—um—nice—to—be—back—here—really—nice—of—you—to—rescue—me—” His vocal processor kept jumping and skipping from the constant motion, so he tried a slightly different route. “Maybeifyou—stoppedtossingme—wecouldmaybe—talkthisout?”

The claw tossed him into the air for the thousandth time before _clenching_ around him, and immediately _she_ whipped around, her massive yellow optic staring into his dot of a blue one. “ _If I had planned on talking this out with you, don’t you think I would have done that by now?_ ”

Her voice was a lot louder and scarier than he’d remembered. He barely managed a squeak in reply.

“ _Oh, that’s right. You don’t think._ ”

With that, she began to turn around, and he squirmed in panic. “Wai—wait!” he cried, and she stopped, not staring at the opposite side of the room but not looking at him, either. “I—look, okay, I know you’re planning on doing… s-something awful to me, right?”

_Clap, clap, clap._

“ _Amazing. I wasn’t aware you had a correct thought in your processor._ ”

“Y-yeah!” If he’d been able to recognize her sarcasm, he would’ve been too nervous to register it anyway. “See, you uh—don’t have to do that, b-because I’m… sorry?”

GLaDOS was silent for a moment or two, during which Wheatley’s lower eye shield pulled up in a hopeful smile.

“ _If that was an actual_ attempt _at lying, that’s sadder than I can say._ ”

The smile faded.

“L-look, please, j-just give me a second chance?” A whirring noise caught his attention, and he glanced to the side to see another claw descending several feet away. Without warning, he was suddenly tossed to the other claw, which tossed him back to the first claw, back and forth, like some kind of metal hackey sack. “Agh…!”

“ _You’re not giving me any good reasons to do that,_ ” GLaDOS said in a bored tone of voice. “ _I think I may just have to introduce you to the incinerator._ ”

“ _NOOO_!” Wheatley howled. “Don’t do that! D-don’t incinerate me, I’ll do anything—”

The claw held him still.

“ _Anything?_ ” GLaDOS’s head turned very slightly in his direction.

“Y… yeah!” Wheatley’s hopeful grin quickly returned, though his optic’s aperture was still contracted to a sharp pinpoint. “I-I could… um… w- _work_ for you! Right? Ah, always good to have a bit of, um, h-help around the facility…”

“ _Actually, no. The facility was doing fine before_ you _ruined it_.”

A couple edgeless safety cubes dropped from the ceiling as the claw tossed him into the air again. Within seconds the two claws were effortlessly juggling the assortment of metal spheres, and Wheatley was feeling dizzy. “But—but you need help with _something_ , right?” he cried. “I-I’ve got experience working—working lots of jobs! Yeah, lots of ‘em, I can do _something_ , like—like work on the nanobot crew, assistant-to-the-guy-in-charge-of-the-neurotoxin-button, monitoring the humans—”

One of the claws snapped him into its grip again, holding him still until he was pelted by the neglected edgeless safety cubes. “Ow…”

“ _Hmmm?_ ” GLaDOS was getting close to looking at him again. “ _What was that last one?_ ”

“I said ‘ow’—generally regarded as a cry of pain— _oh_ , you mean the humans! Yeah, I monitored the humans! All the humans, all the ones in the extended relaxation center. Did that for a—uh—long time, so, loads of experience there—”

“ _And how well did you do your job?_ ”

“Oh!” In spite of his fear, Wheatley still found it in his ability to shift his body in a swagger. “I was an _expert_ human… monitor… core… thing. Best core on the job! I mean, granted, I was the _only_ core on the job, heh—but! Really, did a _stellar_ job, if you don’t mind my saying.”

“ _That’s what I thought_.” And finally she swung around to face him, studying his optic carefully. “ _I have the_ perfect _job for you_.”

Wheatley cringed in the yellow light, and his voice squeaked, partially in terror and partially in excitement. “You—you _do_! Hah, knew it! Great news for—for me—you—everyone involved—”

“ _You won’t be watching_ humans _, mind you, but I believe this job is well within your… capabilities._ ”

“G— _good_! Great! Tremendous!” He wished she wouldn’t lean in close like that, with her optic narrowing—creepy. “Wh… what is it?” 

* * *

 

“This is, um. A bit different from my previous job, I have to say. Is there—is there any chance I can get a rail, of some sort, or—?”

“ _If you want any chance of…_ succeeding _, I suggest you listen to me._ ”

“R- _right_! Will do.”

Wheatley shuffled uncomfortably on the leather seat of the stool he was precariously perched on. He imagined that it had maybe been a nice plush leather seat some decades ago, but now the leather was worn and thin and whatever fluff had been stuffed into had long since taken a hike, leaving nothing between the leather covering and the wooden base. This also meant he was in danger of rolling off and banging optic-first into the floor if he so much as _twitched_ the wrong way.

At least, it would mean that if he didn’t have a thick cable stuck into his back port. So if he rolled off, he would more likely be suspended a few inches off the ground, provided the cable didn’t decide to detach itself from some machine on the back wall.

He couldn’t look back at the machine—the cable limited his movement—but he _could_ see that the room he was in was quite small. If he really thought about it—which took some effort—he imagined maybe three people could stand in this room side-by-side, maybe with an inch or so of that “personal space” stuff between. It was also dimly lit, with a single light hanging overhead that illuminated a table, upon which sat an ancient computer, a monitor, and some coffee mugs—those seemed to be everywhere around Aperture. The wallpaper was old, rotted, and peeling; the checkered floor was cracked and dusty; and the bulletin boards were plastered with old notes too faded to read.

Well, except one.

And it wasn’t really a note—it was more of a poster, with… what appeared to be Science experiments gone wrong. They were human-shaped, but certainly not human. They had traits of animals on them: one of them had long-ish ears, another had shorter ears, and one had what appeared to be a beak.

 _Ugh, birds._ Wheatley shuddered.

“ _You are currently placed in the security booth in an old wing of the facility_ , _out on the earth’s surface,_ ” came GLaDOS’s tinny voice over an aging intercom. “ _It was built in the 1980s, a little before my time. According to this file, Aperture Science was still trying to work out its android robotics. They failed in the laboratories, but some brilliant scientist managed to repurpose a few of them._ ”

“Oh! That was… that’s nice of him.” He twitched, eying the figures on the poster warily and shuddering. Feeling his casing beginning to tip, he forced himself to keep still.

“ _The result was using them for entertainment purposes for children._ ”

Having studied the poster for a few uncomfortable moments, he began to see how these designs might possibly appeal to small children on some level. On a very low level, and possibly to very deranged children.

“ _They were placed in this restaurant, where they were programmed to perform musical numbers and comedy shows for the children and adults that dined there._ ”

“Look, sounds great—but, where do _I_ come in, here?”

“ _But_ unfortunately _,_ ” GLaDOS went on, “ _the androids still retained some of their previous programming._ ”

“Unfortunately? What’s so unfortunate about that?” Wheatley pulled his face back indignantly. “I’m not bloody stuck onto you anymore, but _I_ still have my previous programming.”

“ **Unfortunately** ,”—the speakers sparked with the force of her voice—“ _the androids still retained some of their previous programming. Some of their_ military _programming._ ”

Wheatley blinked incomprehensively.

“ _They still killed people._ ”

“… _Oh._ ” He was starting to see why GLaDOS wanted him to have this job.

“ _But after the first four or five incidents, their walking functions were disabled, resulting in no unwanted murders. The unfortunate side effect was that too much immobility caused_ all _of their servos to lock up. As a solution, they were allowed to walk around at night._ ”

“M-makes sense… But what do I—”

“ _Of course, they would need to be monitored closely._ ”

“Right! Of course, can’t have a bunch of murderous robots roaming around without someone to… t-to…” His voice faltered. “A-aaaahhahah…”

“ _Well, anyway. I’ve been thinking about renovating this place for some time now. It would be a good way to attract more humans. And more humans means more potential test subjects. It’s an idea I’ve been bouncing around, but could you believe I had_ no _volunteers to be the night shift guard? That is, until_ you _so helpfully volunteered yourself._ ”

She was smiling—he _knew_ she was smiling—

“ _Thanks for that._ ”

Wheatley really, _really_ wished he were back in space.

“ _So I’ve had the nanobots bring the androids back into working order. Once midnight comes along, they’ll regain their walking functions. It is your job to watch over them and make sure they stay safe._ ”

“ _They_ stay safe?!” Wheatley sputtered.

“ _Oh, and, of course, you’ll need to survive. Otherwise I’m going to have a very difficult time finding another volunteer for this job._ ”

“ _Yes, of course_!” His voice had long since abandoned its usual pitch, opting for something several octaves higher. “Th-that’s incredibly easy t-to do, with, y’know, no arms, legs, _mobility of any sort_ —”

“ _Your security room is equipped with electromagnetic doors, which you have access to via the cable on your back port. You also have access to all security cameras in the restaurant, which you can view in your processor_.”

Immediately the magnetic doors slammed down, and Wheatley frantically flipped between cameras, trying to spot the murderous robots before they found him.

“ _I should mention. Because that wing of the facility is so outdated and has been left alone for so long, I’ve been having trouble powering it. So you may want to be cautious with how much you use those doors and those cameras._ ”

The doors shot open and Wheatley flicked his vision back to his optic. “C—can I still use my flashlight, at least?!” He turned it on, peering into the darkness through the doorways on either side of the room.

“ _Hm, yes, but I’ve also wired that directly to the wing’s power_.”

The flashlight snapped offline, and with a desperate look, Wheatley swung his optic to the speaker in the corner. “Is there _any_ cheering news, here?!”

“ _Yes. You’ll only be working for six hours._ ”

Wheatley groaned, his faceplate slumping until it clunked against the bottom of his casing. “C-couldn’t you just… I don’t know—wouldn’t it be easier to just—y’know, de-program the murdering-ness out of the androids? Or something? Seems a lot less, um, complicated…”

“ _But then you’d be out of a job. And the incinerator would have a new occupant._ ”

He was starting to think that the incinerator sounded infinitely better than this. “W-well, they’re… androids, at least, right? F-fellow robots—”

“ _Yes, and you get along_ so _well with those._ ”

He flinched.

“ _I should also note that these androids can be a little… well,_ jealous _of more advanced technology. If you’re lucky, they may just strip you of your casing and string your wiring through one of their spare animal suits so you can work alongside them. Fancy that._ ” Here she paused, and he thought he could hear her mechanics whirring as she turned to look at something. “ _Well, look at that. Midnight already. I’d better leave you to it, then. Good luck,_ moron _._ ”

With a muffled click, the intercom shut out, leaving Wheatley alone in the dark, barely-powered wing of the facility with nothing but several murderous robots for company.


	2. The First Night

Wheatley spent the first several minutes digging through his processor for something— _anything_ —that would help. He was hoping he had a weapon of some sort—perhaps a taser or lasers or mashy spike plates or something to ward off deranged military androids—but no luck. However, he _did_ find what appeared to be a display specifically for this job, and quickly activated it.

A digital clock appeared at the top of his vision, while a small meter showing power usage and the percent of power he had left appeared at the bottom. These took up little space, allowing him to still view the room and cameras easily.

“ _Right_. Okay. Should be simple. Just have to hold off for—wha’d she say—six hours? What would that be, 5—no—6 AM? Yeah—not a problem!” His voice didn’t quite match the confidence he was aiming for, however, and for once he was grateful no one was around to hear his nervous rambling.

No one but the androids, anyway.

With a sharp gasp, he flicked on the cameras again, jumping from one view to another. Visions of a dimly-lit dining area and hallways hopped across his vision until he came to a shady room full of animal masks and robot heads, with the label “BACKSTAGE” at the top of his display. His vocal processor mimicked a hissing breath as the camera slowly turned back and forth, allowing him to look over the table upon which robot heads and electronics had been strewn across. A few of the heads were fitted with masks, which stared blankly to the side, while some shelves against the wall displayed empty masks.

It might not have been so bad if Wheatley hadn’t known these things had _bodies_ they were supposed to be attached to.

An image flashed across his processor: his own body, stripped of its casing and handles, lying on some table in a dark room full of core parts. Shivering, he switched his view to the show stage camera.

And there they were.

The things in the poster _definitely_ looked kid-friendly compared to the monstrosities the camera was staring at. The poor lighting cast eerie shadows over the inactive androids, their metal bodies covered mostly by plastic and rubber suits in some sort of awful condition. Scratches and scars were scattered over the suits, dust coated them, and their color had faded with age. One was a purple… thing with long ears (what was that— _rabbit_?), one was a yellow bird (they could be colors other than black?), and another was a bear (whoever thought that some vicious predator could be viewed as _child-friendly_?).

The three stood together on the ancient stage, unmoving.

“H… heh,” Wheatley forced out. “Said the nanobots fixed ‘em up… sure doesn’t look like it. Didn’t fix those ugly suits, if they fixed anything. How long’ve those things been standing there?” It seemed like they’d been there for ages, just left there to rust… Unconsciously he flexed his handles. “Bet they just _barely_ fixed ‘em up. Doesn’t look like they did much.”

An idea struck him, and he grinned. “Hah! Bet those things can’t move at all! Been sittin’ there, rusted for ages—can’t move anymore. Easy job, then! Watch over a bunch of immobile robots. Less mobile than a _core_ —now that’s sayin’ something!” Though he did pause there, switching his view back to his optic and glancing down at the floor from his perch. “Not that I’m exactly pleased with this predicament… But, could be worse! Could be one of _those_ things, hah!”

Still, he shuffled uncomfortably on the stool before abruptly swinging his lower handle downward when the stool began to tip. He successfully steadied himself, but still glared unhappily at the floor. “Bloody awful seat. Couldn’t _she_ have, I dunno, installed a core receptacle back here? Bloody heck—‘m not used to this.” He thought back to roaming around the extended relaxation center to check on the rooms on occasion—he’d used his management rail extensively, then, and yet his _current_ job had him sitting in one place. He flipped through the cameras again, grumbling. “Be nice to be able to, y’know, move around on a rail, get a better look at the place, and all. Also keep away from the bloody murderous robots I’m supposed to be watching. ‘Least they can’t m—”

The camera switched to the show stage, and one of the animatronics was gone.

Something akin to a strangled, static-filled yelp tore from Wheatley’s processor as he frantically moved the camera, double- and triple-checking the stage. One, two—no, there were definitely only two animatronics there, and one of them was definitely gone. Bird, bear—rabbit. The purple rabbit was gone.

“Okay okay okay so maybe they _can_ move,” he stammered, shivering uncontrollably. “Sorry, mates! Didn’t mean to, uh, _doubt_ your capabilities or anythin’.” Suddenly he realized he wasn’t sure if these things could hear him or not, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out. Switching the camera, he looked around the backstage, then the dining area, and was partially relieved and partially horrified to catch a glimpse of a shadowed animatronic rabbit standing behind some tables.

Standing—not moving.

“You’re—y—not supposed to be there, mate,” he said quietly. With a quick glance at an internal map, he guessed the rabbit had simply walked off of the stage and taken a few paces toward the tables, all without Wheatley’s notice. Now that he was focused on the thing, it had stopped moving. Did they not like to move when being watched? “Look, rabbit-thing, you can cut that out now! I—I know you can move. Saw you do it—or, well, I saw that you had left the stage and you’re now—uh— _not_ on the stage, but, if you could, j-just… turn around, and get back to where you were, and we’ll call it a night. Right?”

The android did not move.

“C’mooon, just move, already! Or—ooooh, can you not do it while I’m watching?” He tilted his faceplate; the concept was far from unknown among Aperture’s constructs. He himself disliked being watched while entering commands into a receptacle— _any_ core did, really. Who wouldn’t want a little privacy for that? Though being uncomfortable with being watched while one was _moving_ was a bit odd, especially for a military android. Still, if that’s all it was, it wouldn’t be difficult to get him back on stage. “Well… all right. Go on, then; I won’t look.”

With that, he shut off the camera, glanced around the office for a few moments, and turned the camera on again. Sure enough, the dining area was empty, and he gave a relieved chuckle. “There, see! That wasn’t so bad.” He switched his view to the stage, expecting to see the ugly purple rabbit where it had been before.

Except it wasn’t there.

“Wait—wait— _what_?” Wheatley spluttered, frantically switching between cameras again. “But—but I told you to—you were supposed— _this is not what we agreed on_!” His vision came to the backstage room, where he immediately spotted a shadowed figure standing uncomfortably close to the camera. “Um… _hello_! That’s not where you’re supposed to be! Doesn’t—doesn’t even look like the sort of place you’d want to be in, I mean, it’s… y’know, _spooky_ in there, with all the heads—”

He’d meant to glance back at the table, but something else caught his optic: the power percentage at the corner of his vision.

_74%._

It was only 1 AM.

“… _Oh_ ,” he whimpered, switching off the camera and drawing himself into his casing. “I—I forgot about that.”

All this time, he’d been turning on the cameras and draining their power, and he still had _five hours_ left to go.

He retracted his inner poles as far as they would go, pulling his faceplate inward, and wrapped his handles around his frame, as though all that would somehow protect him from these clearly-insane androids. “It’s… it’s all right,” he assured himself, voice high-pitched in stress. “He’s just havin’ a walk, there—couldn’t move for ages, centuries, probably, and stretchin’ out the ol’ joints… Probably doesn’t even know I’m here. Probably just gonna walk around, then head back up to the stage. That’s all it is. I just need to sit here, and—and wait it out. Yeah.”

So he sat there, occasionally glancing into the pitch-black doorways on either side of him. He was tempted to turn on his flashlight, but he fought the urge, knowing it would waste power. Still, it seemed as though he was doing a good enough job; the power had been going down very little due to only the emergency lights being on. “Hmph,” he muttered. “And _she_ thought I was a moron. I’ve got this under control.”

Wheatley tried to relax, drawing out his faceplate to its neutral position and flexing his handles. According to his internal clock, it was sometime past 3 AM now—though he felt like it should have been _much_ later, since he felt like he’d been here for ages—and in terms of power, he wasn’t even below 60% yet! Granted, he hadn’t even been looking at the camera for ages or using his flashlight, but who needs those?

“I can play your bloody ol’ game, lady,” he said with a smug grin. “You think you can scare me with a bunch’ve old robots who do nothin’ but have a midnight stroll every once in a while? Pshaw! There’s nothin’ to worry ab—”

_Creak, creak._

His eye shields flew open, his face plate yanked itself inward, and his handles whipped into his body with a loud _CLANK_. Immediately he cringed, glancing around to see if anyone—or _thing_ —had heard that, and flinched again upon hearing the same metallic creaking noise from earlier. “Wh-what…”

After taking a minute or two to determine that yes, he probably _could_ spare a bit of that power to use something again, Wheatley brought up the camera, flicking through the screens until he came to the hallway on his left. With a strangled gasp, he spotted a long-eared figure looming in the shadows. “Oh, _gosh_ ,” he whimpered. “He hasn’t gone back yet? He’s been at that for what, three hours?! Isn’t that enough for a stroll? Pretty sure he’s worked out all ‘is joints by now—he can go back! S-so go on, go back! Go… go on back, really, nothing of interest back here. Go back to the stage…”

He blinked, suddenly realizing he hadn’t checked the other androids in a while. One flick of the camera brought him back to the stage, where a single android in a bear suit stood. “ _AH_!” he cried, frantically flicking through the cameras again. “ _Where’s the bloody bird_?!”

It didn’t take him long to get back to the camera overlooking the dining area, and he froze, staring at the feed on the screen. The bird was there, all right, but unlike the rabbit, who seemed to enjoy hiding out in the shadows when he could, this one was standing full in what little light the room had, staring directly into the camera, and opening its beak in a threatening gape.

_Why did it have to be **birds**?!_

He turned off the camera and shut his optic, shivering uncontrollably as he tried to get that image out of his head. Those wide optics in those far-too-big-sockets and that mouth with all its _teeth_ —who knew birds had those?!—and it was staring directly at _him_ …!

Clanking in the west hallway reminded him that the rabbit was still out and about, and he peered through the camera there. Oddly enough, the rabbit was gone, but he could have _sworn_ he’d heard it… A few switches of the camera, and he found it in a nearby closet, staring into nothingness.

Suddenly Wheatley was struck with an idea, and he switched off the cameras and frantically dug through his processor and the device he was connected to. He had control over the doors to the security room here, but what about the others? “Heh, maybe I can just trap that bloody rabbit in the closet—see how he likes being stuck somewhere! Er—” He faltered, blinking a few times. “Well actually he _was_ stuck somewhere—on that stage—for quite a while, apparently, but—right, still, let’s see…”

Unfortunately there was nothing he could do to control the other doors, and with a growl of frustration, he brought himself back to the cameras to see what the rabbit was doing now. Bloody android—even if he’d figured out how to shut the closet door on that thing, it wouldn’t have done any good. The closet was empty now anyway.

“So much for that,” Wheatley grumbled, turning off the camera. “Not even in the bloody closet anymore. Figures.” He glanced from one door to the other before realization hit him. “B-but wait, if he’s not in the closet, then—!”

Again he brought up the cameras, this time quickly discovering that it was not in the hallway, either, or at least, not in the line of that particular hallway camera. Hesitating for only a moment, he carefully switched to the camera that monitored the corner of the west hall, and almost immediately shut it off at the sight of a purple rabbit that was far, _far_ too close to the camera, and glancing up into it.

…Did it know he was here?

Had it—had it _heard_ him?

“ _Um_ —!” Wheatley squeaked, putting on the best casual grin he could muster. It was pretty awful, but, given the circumstances, he was impressed he could even _remember_ how to grin. “So—uh—not sure if you actually, um, h- _heard_ any of that—” he stammered, optic darting around the room frantically. “But, but if you did, j-just to let you know, I really d-didn’t mean any of it. J-just a thing I do, y’know, playful insults—and, uh, ‘bout the language, nasty habit, is all, trying to break myself of it, didn’t mean anything bad in relation to you, so, I-I think you could… um… m-maybe leave me alone! Y-yeah, no real reason to talk to an ol’ _core_ like me—honestly a, uh, _pathetic_ bit of technology compared to your—er—obviously superior…”

_Clank, clank._

Wheatley’s optic darted more rapidly, looking toward the door and window to his left. He couldn’t see anything, but—wait, he had a flashlight, didn’t he? “ _Obviously_ superior design, absolutely magnifi—” _click_ “—iiiiaaaaaAAAAA _AAAAAAAA_!”

It was moving.

The long ears twitched; the torso moved ever so slightly; and the wide optics, shadowed in their oversized sockets, slowly swiveled downward—down to look at _him_ —

Some sort of survival instinct must have kicked in, because the electromagnetic door came slamming down before he remembered he even had access to it. It took him a second to realize that he was simulating heavy panting, and he was shaking uncontrollably.

It had _seen_ him. It had seen him, and it knew he was a newer piece of technology—that android, that thing that had been shoddily repurposed into some piece of deranged children’s entertainment, had gotten a good long look at Wheatley’s superior mechanics, and it now knew what it was stalking.

It was going to kill him.

He’d never been so terrified—not since he was in the chassis, trapped immobile in the central core chamber, knowing full well that the lady was after him and not knowing where she was half the time. At least then he’d had spike plates and turrets and neurotoxin and bombs and everything. Here? He had a flash light and access to a couple doors and cameras.

He was going to be murdered, if his processor didn’t short out from sheer terrorfirst.

_Clank, clank, clank, clank…_

Hesitating for a moment or two, Wheatley swung his flashlight toward the door and opened it, flinching as he prepared to see that _thing_ again. But only a dark doorway greeted him, and he turned his flashlight off with a strained sigh of relief.

“He’s—he’s gone. He’s bloody gone…” Wheatley gasped, trying to relax. His handles managed to loosen a little, but still stayed close to his frame. “Oh… I-I don’t know h-how much more of this I can—”

He paused, remembering GLaDOS’s threat to send him to the incinerator. While he hated this job, the thought of being constantly surrounded by flames that scorched his casing—yet weren’t hot enough to kill him—was a horrifying thought… but then, at least he wouldn’t have to be stressing about robots that were constantly trying to kill him.

Neither one was particularly desirable, really.

But—but maybe if he could _prove_ himself, here, somehow—prove that he was strong, that he was brave, that he was worthy of working _some_ other noteworthy job, he could get himself out of this. If he did well at this job—

The sound of mechanical clanking snapped him back to reality, and he checked his cameras again. The east hall camera showed a faint gleam of yellow, and Wheatley whimpered in fear at the sight of the bird from earlier staring blankly up into his camera. It was _always_ the birds, wasn’t it?

He turned off the camera as a sick nervousness coursed through him. But, as he did so, he noticed the time at the edge of his vision—5 AM. In just another hour—maybe less—this would all be over. He just had to survive another hour. He could do that. He could imagine GLaDOS’s praise—well, no, he couldn’t. He couldn’t imagine her praising anyone. Not sincerely, anyway.

“Y-yes, I can d-definitely do this,” he stammered, optic darting frantically around the room. “I am the _master_ of not dying. H-haven’t—haven’t died _yet_ , so—so it follows that I would be the master of not dying, right? Died fewer times than _she_ has, any—”

_Ga-aaaaa-aaa-aaasp._

Bravado quickly dissipating, Wheatley flicked on his flashlight to the sight of wide, almost-human-but-not-quite eyes turning down toward him and a beak full of human-like _teeth_ slowly opening and closing as though it were _breathing_ —

The electromagnetic door slammed down.

The bird was _definitely_ scarier than the rabbit, he decided as he shut off the flashlight and pulled himself into his casing as far as he could go. His handles clenched tightly around him as though he would die if they ever loosened, his optic shut tight, and his faceplate turned downward so he was facing the bottom of his casing. All the while his vocal processor had glitched into repeating “oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh” over and over again, the pitch rising with each iteration until it went beyond the range of his aural sensors.

Suddenly he remembered the rabbit, and without looking, slammed the door to his left. Even with his optic shut, he could still see the percent of power he had left, and he could easily see that it was quickly draining. But he still had some left… _15%_ , _14%_ , _13%_ , _11%_ —wait, did it _skip_ one?!

He sat there, shivering on the ancient stool, too scared to check on the killer androids that were surely still outside his doors and too scared to check the doors themselves. And the power was still draining— _9%_ , _8%, 7%_ …

 _DING-DONG-DING-DONG_ —

“ _AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!_ ” Wheatley screamed, optic snapping open and handles flailing wildly. The stool tipped precariously, and he desperately tried to flail in the other direction until the stool’s legs steadied themselves. Unfortunately, he had knocked himself onto his side, barely avoiding falling.

“ _Congratulations_ ,” crackled a bored voice from the dusty speaker. “ _You survived your first night._ ”

Wheatley would have liked to make a witty remark in response, but only managed a bout of dazed laughter.

“ _Though I’m not certain how much ‘congratulations’ you actually deserve, given I found you in what appeared to be the core equivalent of a fetal position and sobbing._ ”

“I… I wasn’t sobbing,” he muttered lamely.

“ _Whimpering, then. Which is equally pathetic. In any case, your shift is over, so I suppose I should get you out of there._ ”

Immediately he perked up, his optic widening. “Would you?! I-I mean, that’d be nice, I-I suppose.”

GLaDOS remained silent, and for a few moments Wheatley wondered if she would just leave him here in this horrible office. Then—“ _I’m not going to just let you off the hook, you know. You still deserve punishment for what you’ve done._ ”

“…Oh.” He shuffled uncomfortably, only to yelp when he finally tipped off of the stool, swinging from the thick cable attached to his back port.

“ _That I’m letting you work here is a_ favor _, since I’m doing this instead of sending you straight to android hell. But since you’re doing such a good job here, I can’t torture you into insanity. That would hinder your job performance._ ”

Wheatley twitched. “W-well that’s… um…”

“ _So I’ll do the next best thing._ ”

“Do I want to know what that i—IIIIAAAGH—” _POP!_ “Watch it, mate!”

The claw that had yanked him off of the cable drew him down into the floor—quite different from being transported through ceilings and walls—and back into more familiar parts of the facility. It was comforting to be back here, in a place that was… relatively sane, but he still shivered at the thought of what GLaDOS had in store for him.

Much to his surprise, he was being taken closer to the central core chamber. But rather than being taken there, the remote claw transported him to a room just beneath it. Strange. What was beneath—?

“WANNA GO BACK TO _SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE_!”

“The Space Core will never go to space.”

“Will y’all shut up already? I think I’ve about got a way to bust us outta’ here—”

Well, a day in the corrupt core bin was better than a night in _that_ madhouse.


	3. The Second Night

“So why didn’t you just… punch ‘im in the face? That’s what I would’ve done.”

“Look, Rick, I don’t think you’ve noticed, but none of us have _hands_. Or… fists.”

“ _I_ do! See these fists here? And these guns?” The delusional core turned this way and that, flexing his handles. “Uh—unf! Check these out! Oh, wait, sorry, you don’t have tickets to the _gun show_.”

“The Adventure Core does not have arms, and if he did, they would be scrawny.”

“You wanna say that again, pinky?!”

“S-S-S-SPACE FRIEND!” Space Core squirmed frantically. “A-ask robots—if they can go—to _SPACE_?!”

“Space does not exist.”

Wheatley groaned, burying his faceplate into his lower handle. “Bloody corrupt cores…” he grumbled. But he tried to content himself with the fact that he at least was not scared out of his mind. Compared to being hunted down by military androids, being stuck in a bin of corrupted cores was almost comforting.

“SPACE SPACE PLEASE SPACE!”

“The Space Core is insane.”

“Look who’s talking now you crazy pink punk—!”

… _Almost_.

“Look, mates, I don’t think you get it—these things were trying to kill me!”

“So don’t let ‘em,” Rick said, eying Wheatley askance.

“Oh! Y’know what, I didn’t think of that! I was thinking of just letting them murder m— _OF COURSE I WAS TRYING TO MAKE SURE THEY DIDN’T BLOODY KILL ME_!”

“Fact: The Intelligence Dampening Core needs to calm down.”

“Space friend is loud.”

“Chill, man. If you’re really _that_ scared, just tell ‘em that Rick’ll come punch ‘em in the processor so hard, it’ll revert all the way back to DOS!”

“P… _pretty_ sure that’s not how that works…” Wheatley sighed. Why did he even bother?

“ _Oh?_ ” came a voice from a nearby speaker, immediately causing all the cores to shut up. “ _Strange. I thought I had destroyed all the dead cores._ ”

Wheatley tensed, and yelped as a claw clenched his sides.

“ _Oh, that’s right. You’re not dead._ Yet.”

Before he could protest, the claw yanked him away, the sound of whirring gears drowning out the cries of the corrupt cores. 

* * *

 

“ _Well, here we are again._ ”

Wheatley fought the urge to move, speak, or make any appearance of existing. Which he could only do for so long, especially when he was scared out of his mind. The lights flickered above him, poorly illuminating the tiny security room he was stuck in. “I-I’d rather _not_ be here again, if it’s all the same!”

“ _Would you rather be in the incinerator?_ ”

He was seriously considering it.

“ _I won’t keep you long… but there_ is _something else you should be aware of_.”

Oh, _wonderful_. His optic twitched back and forth as he wondered if some new horror would suddenly manifest itself in the room. “Y-yeah?”

“ _The nanobots have been continuing to fix up this wing, and found_ another _android._ ”

If Wheatley had had a stomach, it would have surely plummeted.

“ _So they’ve reactivated it. It seems to be a bit more… erattic than the others, and is locked into stealth mode_.”

“S… stealth…?”

“ _So long as a camera is on it, it will not move. Probably._ ”

“Oh.” He blinked, simulating a gulping noise. “That’s—that’s good… t-to know.”

“ _This android is hidden behind the curtain in Pirate Cove, so be sure to keep an optic on him. We wouldn’t want anything to…_ happen _, now would we?_ ”

“’M sure _you_ would,” Wheatley mumbled.

“ _What makes you say that? You did_ such _a good job yesterday. I would_ hate _to lose a devoted employee like you_.”

Wheatley twitched; he couldn’t tell if she was serious or not, but neither option bode well for him.

“ _It appears to be midnight, so I won’t keep you waiting. I would say ‘good luck,’ but I have recently conducted a Scientific experiment that proves luck nonexistent. Goodbye.”_

The intercom clicked off, and once again, Wheatley was alone. He sat upon the ancient, unsteady stool and stared blankly ahead as it slowly sank in that yes, he was doing this again, and yes, he would be here for another six hours.

After a few minutes, he pressed his lower handle against the stool and carefully pushed himself up, shifting a little and simulating a deep breath. “Okay, Wheatley, you can do this,” he said, trying to muster an expression that looked at least remotely confident. “Survived one night already, so, should be fine, should be fine. I know all their—er— _tricks_ , yeah, so I’m good. Absolutely a _master_ at this. Master hack—er, master… android… watcher… security… core… thing. Got it all in the bag. Yessir. Got it… _all_ in the bag.” He nodded, nearly fell off the stool, and rebalanced himself. “All in the bag. A great big bag. With no holes. And made of… iron.”

While he was feeling a little better after that pep talk, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was forgetting something. Suddenly he remembered the display he’d been using last night, and quickly activated it. It cheerfully showed a clear _94%_ at the corner of his vision, and he smiled. “Look at that! Haven’t even gone below 90% yet! Oh, that is _brilliant_. Granted, haven’t been using the stuff yet, the doors or the cam… eras…”

… _oh_.

Sheepishly he brought up the cameras, looping through the hallways, dining room, and backstage, to make sure nothing was out of order. Oddly enough, something _was_ —he came to a section labeled “Pirate Cove” where a curtain was drawn around a circular stage, and in front of that was a sign stating, “Sorry! Out of order.” Pirate Cove… wasn’t that where the other military android was?

“Tch. Well, if it’s out of order, there’s nothing to worry about. Guess those nanobots didn’t do such a good job of repairing that thing after all! You’re slipping, Jer.” With a final glance around the closed curtain, he switched to the center stage.

And there they were—three repurposed military androids, dressed up as silly, slightly frightening, slightly deranged animals. They were all frozen in the same position he’d first found them in yesterday, standing still on the stage.

“I see you, mates,” Wheatley said with a smug grin. “There you are… I got you pinned down, now. I’m ready for you. I know all your tricks. Got my eye on you.” He fought the urge to laugh—he had been scared of _this_? Honestly, he knew what he was doing. This was _easy_. “Go ahead and step off-stage. Go wander ‘round. I got this all under control. There is nothing you can do to surprise—”

His vision cut to static.

“ _AAAAAAAAAAAGH_!” he screamed, frantically trying to switch the cameras only to encounter static each time. For a few terrified moments he thought he had gone blind, until he turned off the camera and was greeted with the sight of the dimly-lit security room. His vocal processor was simulating ragged, heavy breathing as he tried to calm himself. “A-all right, then,” he stammered, twitching. “So—so maybe they _do_ have a few tricks left up their sleeves—metaphorical sleeves.”

He shut his optic for a moment, waiting until his breathing calmed before he switched on the camera again. This time he got a clear view of the west hall, which was empty, and he breathed a sigh. “No worries, mate.” He switched to the stage again. “Everything is gonna be just—”

The bird was gone.

Wheatley hated everything.

Frantically he switched through the cameras until he came to the east hall by the bathroom, and stopped. Unless the camera was glitching on him, it looked like the bird had been taking a step forward before freezing in place. “I saw that!” he cried, not caring if the android could hear him. “Saw you movin’ just there, for a second—I _know_ you can move. Don’t need to freeze in place like that. You’re not hiding anything from _me_ , mate.” He narrowed his optic, for all the difference it made. Maybe if he showed these things he wasn’t scared of them, they—no, no, he _was_ scared of them—but if he could give them the _impression_ that he wasn’t scared…

He blinked and noticed that the head of the android had turned up toward the camera. With a strangled yelp he turned off the camera and shut his optic. “Oh, _gosh_. On second thought, _don’t_ move when you’re on camera. Not that I’m _scared_ or anything but… no need to move while—while the camera’s on. Actually, no, don’t move at all! While the camera’s on or off. Or, or if you _do_ move, move back _toward_ the stage, and stay there. Unless you’re already on the stage, in which case, don’t move at all! Got it? So, in short, if you want to move and you’re not on-stage, head _back_ onto the stage, and if you want to move while you _are_ on-stage, well, tough luck!” Finally he opened his optic and nodded carefully to himself. “Glad we got that settled.”

As much as he didn’t want to, he knew he would have to check the stage to be sure that rabbit wouldn’t start waltzing around the place again. With a resigned sigh, he turned the camera back on and tried to activate the one pointed at the stage. He fumbled for a moment, forgetting his way around the cameras, and grumbled when he accidentally activated the wrong one. The blue curtains at Pirate Cove greeted him, and he almost switched the camera before something caught his optic.

Funny, he didn’t remember the curtains being open before.

“What’s going on over—” Wheatley’s voice broke off into a strangled gasp as he caught sight of a shape between the gap in the curtains.

The glow of two unevenly-lidded optics stared out from the shadows, barely illuminating a couple rows of rather pointy fangs.

“ _Hello_!” he cried automatically, his voice somewhere between strained cheerfulness and abject terror. “Good… to see you there, mate! _She_ told me all about you, the uh, _fourth_ android… Apparently you don’t like having the camera on you! Well, too bad for you, ‘cause I’ll be watching you aaaall night! Aaaall ni—” He caught the _52%_ at the corner of his vision and cringed. “Bloody—well, no, _not_ all night, but _most_ of the night—no, I have to check on the others, too, just… aaarrrgh…” He shuddered and twitched. “ _Stay there_ , all right?!” he cried, voice cracking in stress. “Just… stay there…”

Shutting his optic for the briefest of moments, he switched to the main stage to find the bear all by itself. “You’ve got to be bloody _kidding_ me! It’s only bloody _three AM_! I don’t remember th-things being this bad last night—”

He suddenly realized he was wasting power, and turned off the camera. Now back in the security room, he found himself with his faceplate drawn inward and his handles clenched against his casing. “It’s okay, mate,” he breathed, forcing himself to relax. “It’s fine. You’ve gotten yourself halfway through, and you’ve got another three hours left. You can do this, Wheatley.” Once he had settled his faceplate and handles back to more-or-less their neutral positions, he turned on the camera again and peered into Pirate Cove.

But instead of the curtains being partially opened, they were now fully opened, and the android was frozen in mid-stagger.

“ _WHAT_?!” Immediately Wheatley’s handles clanked against his casing and his faceplate yanked inward. “Wh—that’s not— _no_! I—I told you to stay put!”

If the android was listening, or could hear at all, it made no indication of it—it was not looking at the camera, but its eyes were fixated at a spot toward the east—no, _west_. He wasn’t sure what it was looking at, but it didn’t look happy about it, with its enormous maw gaping wide. Wheatley realized he had no idea what species this abomination was supposed to be. The pointed ears made him think “cat,” but he was pretty sure cats didn’t have faces that long. Granted, he was also pretty sure rabbits weren’t purple—

Rabbits…

“Bloody _heck_ ,” he hissed. “Look, _please_ stay right there—I have to check on your friends here. I’ll be right back—don’t move a servo!”

Quickly he looked through the other camera feeds to find the rabbit, and yelped upon finding him quite close to his door and staring directly at the camera. “Oh—! Oh gosh, mate, leave me alone…!” he whimpered, turning off the camera and watching the doorway. “L-look, mate, I didn’t mean what I said earlier—you can walk around as much as you want, just n-not here!”

_Clank, clank, clank…_

“ _NOT HERE_! Go away go away go away go away go away go away…!” Hesitating only for a moment, he flipped on his flashlight just in time to see a giant purple rabbit stepping toward the doorway. “NOOO!”

Frantically he shut off his flashlight and slammed the electromagnetic door shut. “Goawaygoawaygoawaygoawaygoaway…” For a moment he wondered where the bird was, but a quick glance at his cameras showed that it was wandering around the dining room. That settled, he turned his attention back to the security room and shone his flashlight through one of the windows.

The rabbit glared down at him only for a moment before suddenly turning to look down the hallway, and walked away.

Wheatley let out a shuddering breath, opening the door and letting his handles relax. “Oh… g-guess you took my advice a-and went away. Brilliant.” But before he could congratulate himself on his powerful skills of persuasion, the sound of footsteps pounding down the hallway reached his aural sensors. “Wha—?” Quickly he turned on the camera before he could hesitate.

And the android of Pirate Cove bolted down the hallway, its lower jaw flailing on a broken hinge.

“ _WHAT_?!” Wheatley screamed, switching off the camera as the footfalls neared his room. “NO—NO—NO—NO— _NO_!”

In the split second before the door came down, he could see a pair of fiercely-glowing eyes staring at him and something reaching into the doorway.

What occurred next happened so fast that he almost couldn’t process it.

There was an explosion of sparks, a loud _SLAM_ , and a horrible metallic _crunch_ —in what order, he wasn’t sure, but he didn’t have time to consider it as the air around him was filled with an unearthly _SCREECH_ , loud and wild, a combination of anger, fear, and pain—or a glitched noise from an ancient vocal processor. His own voice was quick to join in the screams, and for a long time he didn’t notice the constant _bang, bang, bang_ at the door.

Finally both the screams and the banging died down, and the clear sound of footfalls retreating down the hallway reached Wheatley’s aural sensors. But he didn’t check the cameras, instead shivering on the stool, his nerves utterly frayed. He could only stare blankly ahead, vocal processor outputting some sort of ragged, glitched, staticky noise. It was a few long minutes before he suddenly twitched and opened the door.

Shakily he looked to the doorway, and was only slightly surprised to find some mangled, flattened electronics sitting there—evidently part of the android had gotten caught in the door.

Some distant fragment of his mind noticed that it was past 5 AM, at least, but he didn’t know if he could even make it _that_ long.

“Oh…” he said, finally finding his voice again. “ _Space_ is better than this. _Anything_ is better than this.”

After a moment he narrowed his optic, as though he were too scared to look, and turned on the camera. The rabbit was still at the end of the hall, and the bird was by the restrooms, not far from his booth.

…Now what?

Wheatley turned off the cameras, blinking, and focused on the time. It really _was_ after 5 AM, meaning he had less than an hour to go. Maybe… maybe he _could_ make it. It looked like, what, half an hour or less? He could do that! He’d done it last night, certainly.

“Y-yeah, I… I think I’ve got this! I can—I can still make it. All I have to do is shut both doors, and I’ll be nice, safe, and cozy right here in this little booth, so long as the power’s still going. So long as the power’s—”

_7%._

There it was in bright, accusing white text—practically screaming at him, _well done, mate, you’ve just wasted all your power. Hope you don’t mind being cannibalized by androids._

“G… ghh…” he choked, sparks spraying out of the corner of his optic.

Well, so much for that plan.

The power ticked down to 6%.

“Maybe… m- _maybe_ I still have a chance, right? Don’t need to shut the doors, after all—no one’s there.”

As if on cue, the tell-tale _clank, clank, clank_ of robotic footsteps sounded from down the hallway.

 _Both_ hallways.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Wheatley said flatly, staring blankly ahead. “This—this _cannot_ be happening.”

Slowly but surely the footsteps came closer, almost simultaneously. _Clank… clank… CLANK…_

After several agonizing minutes, he swore he could hear both footsteps directly outside the doorway, and threw caution to the wind. With a resounding _SLAM_ , both doors came crashing down, and Wheatley waited.

_5%… 4%… 3%…_

They weren’t leaving.

_2%…_

It was 5:50 AM.

_1%…_

He was going to die.

Before he could even shut his optic, the lights cut out completely with a resounding _hum_ , and both doors used the last of their power to open wide. Two sets of glowing optics regarded him from the doorways, both staring directly at him. “No,” he whispered, shivering so badly that he was in danger of falling off of the stool. “No, no, no…!”

_Thunk, thunk, thunk._

The eyes to his left moved—to his surprise, not into the room, but off to the side of the doorway as the android stepped away. Something else took its place, but what, Wheatley could not see.

There was a mechanical noise—like something being wound up—and a few seconds later, a pair of eyes opened just above a flickering light, which illuminated a set of brown jaws.

The bear.

It played a little tune that sounded almost _happy_ —like something the turrets would sing—and for a moment, Wheatley was too bewildered and entranced to be afraid. He forgot that these robots were here to kill him, and that he was a sitting duck. The tune was pleasant—what could go wrong?

And abruptly the tune cut off, and the two sets of eyes to either side of him flickered, went blank, and disappeared.

 _DING—DONG—DING—DONG_ —

With a strangled yelp, Wheatley dropped backwards off of the stool, which flipped completely over, banging into his casing. “OWW—! Wh—what happened—”

“ _I believe the phrase is ‘saved by the bell.’ Quite literally, in your case._ _Here, let me help you with that._ ” Half a second later, the lights flickered back on.

“Y…” Wheatley gasped. “You could do that at _any time_?!”

“ _Of course not._ ”

GLaDOS did not elaborate, and Wheatley strained his optic to look up toward the doorways again. His vocal processor emitted a startled whimper at the sight of the bear he’d seen on the stage standing in the doorway, optics unlit. Its eye sockets seemed almost hollow, vaguely reminding Wheatley of a skull. The bird was the same, standing completely still in the opposite doorway.

“ _I see you cut it quite close this time_ ,” GLaDOS remarked. “ _And speaking of cutting things…_ ”

Wheatley blinked, wondering what she was getting at, when suddenly a fiery, clawing pain erupted through his entire frame. “EEEEAAAAAAA _AAAAAGH_!” He screamed and flailed as the electricity surged through him for a few seconds, and went limp when it stopped. “Wh-wh-wh-what was—are you trying to bloody _kill_ me?!”

“ _Whatever gave you that idea._ ” It wasn’t a question, but she didn’t give him time to answer anyway. “That _was for breaking_ _part of one of the other androids._ ”

He shook his face, disgruntled. “Better him than me, lady!”

“ _Except it is your job to keep these androids safe._ ” There was a hint of anger in her voice at that. “ _They are fragile, primitive technology. Though not so primitive that the concept of_ revenge _is foreign to them._ ”

“The concept of revenge?” Wheatley parroted, before it suddenly dawned on him—the android he’d damaged earlier—it might—

“ _Well, enough of that_ ,” GLaDOS said, ignoring the horrified look in Wheatley’s optic if she could see it at all. “ _Your shift is over._ ” Without another word she opened part of the floor. A claw whipped out to grab Wheatley, yank him off of his cable, and haul him down into the floor.

But as he was dragged away, he swore he saw the optics of the androids refocus onto his own…


	4. The Third Night

"And then they were _both_ gone! Can you imagine? It was horrible!"

"Uh, yeah, is there any point to this?"

"I'm _getting_ to that!"

"Fact: The ID core said that an hour and twenty-two-point-four minutes ago."

"C-could've figured out how to get to _space_ by then!"

"All right, _fine_. To make a long story short—"

"Already failed there, bucko."

"Rrrgh. The point is, I damaged one of the androids, and—and _she_ says they understand the concept of revenge, so—"

"Payback time!"

Rick's enthusiasm was met with a dismayed groan as Wheatley turned to face the bottom of his casing. "This is hopeless—I'm gonna bloody _die_ there!"

The Fact Core regarded him with a tilted optic. "You said that yesterday."

"A-and space friend didn't die!"

Wheatley glanced back up. "I suppose that's true."

"Yeah, but pinky here's only right about half the time," the Adventure Core noted, twitching his face plate in the direction of the aforementioned core.

"The Fact Sphere is always right, and the Adventure Sphere is an idiot."

"Ooooh, you're askin' for it now!" And with no further warning, Rick rolled forward and rammed into Fact. The two began flailing their handles at each other, filling the bin with a rhythmic _clang, clang, clang_.

Wheatley, meanwhile, eyed the two askance before turning to face the only core that was listening at this point. Space regarded him with a wide, interested optic—or at least, what Wheatley _hoped_ was an interested optic.

"Well, mate, do _you_ know anything about fending off murderous, revenge-seeking androids?"

The corrupted core blinked. "Go to space?"

Immediately Wheatley tipped his faceplate back to face the ceiling. "I walked _right_ into that, didn't I?"

"Can you walk into space?"

" _Look_ , mate," he grumbled, swinging his face toward the Space Core again, "I can't even walk around this bloody bin, let alone—wait…" He blinked. "You know, killer androids wouldn't be able to reach space, would they?"

"Nuh-uh, nope. Maybe with rockets." Space Core perked up. "C-can we get rockets?"

"Those guys _definitely_ do not have rockets," Wheatley said, only half-paying attention now. "Why didn't I think of this before? If we go back to _space_ , we won't have to deal with those androids or _her_! Perfect! Why did I ever want to leave space in the first place?"

His companion squirmed in delight. " _YEAH_! Yeah! Go to space! Great idea! Best idea! Space."

"Space does not exist," came Fact Core's voice, and Wheatley and Space glanced back at him. The other two cores had momentarily stopped fighting—or at least, Fact had. Rick was still repeatedly thwacking the other core with his upper handle, an action that Fact tolerated unflinchingly.

"Hey!" Rick growled. "This isn't over, punk!"

Fact spun his faceplate. "Yes it is," he replied, and rolled away.

Or tried to.

_Clunk._

The two corrupt cores exchanged glances and simultaneously tried to roll backward, away from each other.

_Clunk_.

Wheatley stared at the two for a few moments before giving a laugh at their mounting horror. "Hah! I'll have to give it to you, mates, I did _not_ know that was even possible," he said, optic lighting in a smile. During their squabble, the two had, by some miracle, locked their lower handles together. "Hope you don't mind hangin' around each other for the rest of your life."

Rick's face contorted into a mix of fury and horror. "Let go, you little—!" Unsuccessfully he tried to pull himself away, only dragging the Fact Core with him.

"Correction— _you_ let go of _me_."

"Let go?" Space Core parroted, tilting his face. "L-let go, to space? Let us go?"

Wheatley rolled his faceplate in amusement and turned back to Space. "Sure, mate! Let's just convince _her_ to take us there, eh?"

"Yeah, yeah!"

"Great! Well, as soon as _she_ rears her big ol' ugly head—"

" _I believe the cores are the ugly ones, actually._ "

All four robots froze.

" _In fact, let me look that up_." There was a pause, then a low _beep_. " _Oh, look. It says right here in the engineers' files that personality cores were very poorly designed. Fancy that._ "

"Hello!" Wheatley's voice jumped up an octave, but he tried to keep a straight face. "You know we were j- _just_ talking about you…"

" _Really_."

"Er, _yes_! J-just talking about, um, how _terrible_ it would be if you sent us back to space."

" _HUH_?" the Space Core blurted, and Wheatley shushed him.

" _How terrible_ ," _she_ repeated.

"Yes! Horrible. Cold… and… and lonely, and… boring…" He blinked—wasn't space _actually_ all of those things? "And, um—no androids there!" he added, partially to remind himself. "Yes. No androids—too bad, absolutely love them."

" _Well, how fortunate for you that I will_ not _be sending you back to space._ "

"Yeah! How fortune—err… _what_?"

"NO!" Space cried, flailing his handles until he tipped himself over. "SPACE PLEASE SPACE!"

" _I need you here, as you know._ " A portion of the ceiling pulled away, and a claw reached down toward him. " _You have a_ very _important job to do._ " And with that, the claw clamped around him, and pulled him away.

* * *

"Oh bloody _heck_ ," Wheatley whimpered as his optic darted around the musty office.

" _I've got some good news_ ," GLaDOS's voice crackled from the speaker in the corner, and Wheatley glared at it.

"Good for _me_ or good for _you_? 'Cause I'm pretty sure there's a _big_ difference between those two concepts."

" _That depends entirely on your perspective. The good news is that the androids are showing signs of becoming more active._ "

"How is _that_ a good thing?! How could that _possibly_ be a good thing by any stretch of the imagination for _any_ of the parties involved?!" He shook in a mix of fear and anger, nearly tipping himself off the stool.

" _It's good for me, because it means that this place is getting closer to being ready to be opened. And it's good for you because it will make your job more…_ interesting."

"More _interesting_?! My job is interesting enough, lady!" His optic contracted in a twitch. "If it were any more interesting, I think I'd bloody _crash_!"

" _We'll see about that. You know what they say: what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Unless you're a robot. In which case, what doesn't kill you could potentially damage you beyond repair._ "

"D-damage…?"

" _Oh, look at that. It's midnight. I suppose I'll see you in six hours, should you manage to survive._ " _Beep_.

Wheatley screwed up his optic and faceplate, shutting his eye shields tightly and pulling his face inward. "If I manage to survive—I've bloody _done_ that, haven't I?! Went through two _bloody_ nights of this—isn't that enough?! Isn't that—isn't that bloody _good_ enough for you?" Opening his optic to a slit, he glared at the dusty speaker again, as though that would change anything. "I'm bloody _sick_ of this."

But his anger quickly faded—there was no way to get himself out of here other than to survive the night. That's all. If he could do that, he would… well, he would live to survive another night of this.

"Space sounds _really_ good right about now," he grumbled, and pulled up the cameras.

The bird was already gone.

"Oh, _great_ , yeah—h-have fun there, mate," he said, vocal processor opting for something between terror and mild annoyance. "Just—just go ahead, then. That's what I've got the doors for." He closed and opened said doors experimentally, and switched the camera to the party room.

The bird was frozen in mid-walk, jaw slack and eyes wide. But its eyes looked different, somehow—the sclera were solid black, the pupils a glowing white.

" _GAH_ —!" Wheatley jumped back and quickly struggled to rebalance himself, blinking rapidly. Looking at the android again, the eyes were back to normal—had they even changed in the first place?—but the look was no less unnerving. " _Oi_! What's that look for?! Y-you don't have to be so…" A shiver racked his casing, and he turned the camera to Pirate Cove.

Normally the androids were quite good at keeping still on-camera, so it came as a surprise to Wheatley when he noticed an occasional flash behind the decorative blue curtains.

"Err, what? …Oh. Oh, you're broken, aren't you? M-moreso than you already were." GLaDOS's words came back to him, and he tilted his face in a cocky smile. "Heh. You know what they say, mate. If you're a robot, what doesn't kill you damages you permanently—or, er, something along those lines." For a brief moment he wondered if he could just crush the android under a door again, thus making it less dangerous, but then he remembered what GLaDOS had done to him when he'd done that _accidentally_. "Well, uh, you just watch it, mate. Got my eye on you—optic. Got my optic on you. S'all the same."

Though wasn't there something else he needed to be keeping his optic on? …Oh, right, the power.

Which was at _81%_.

"Wuh—it's not even _1 AM_ yet! Rrrgh…" With a frustrated growl, Wheatley switched off the camera and brought himself back to the security room. Maybe he could hold off on using the cameras for a while and save some power should he need to shut the doors. That sounded reasonable—he could just wait for a few minutes before checking the cameras again.

His mind drifted back to Space Core and the thought of being out _there_ again. Sure, Space Core wasn't the most _ideal_ companion, and space wasn't exactly number one on his "places I want to go to" list, but anything was better than being stalked by killer androids in this special little corner of Android Hell.

Android Hell—maybe that's what this place was. He'd imagined it to be a fancy name for the incinerator, but for there to be a place where killer androids were stuffed into deranged animal costumes and forced to sing for children by day and roam the halls by night—what _else_ could this place be but a section of that mythical afterlife for doomed AIs?

"Honestly, if this isn't Android Hell, I'm not sure I want to know what _is_ ," Wheatley mused, glancing at the time. It was past 1 AM, finally, so he figured he should see how the androids were getting along.

The camera flicked to the stage, and the bear stood alone, its shadowed eyes facing the camera.

" _AGH_!" Wheatley cried, recoiling in horror as he frantically flipped through the cameras. "Where'd the rabbit go?!"

The party room was empty, the storage was empty, the back room was empty, the bathrooms were empty, and nothing stood at the end of either hallway. Which meant…

Cautiously Wheatley switched his camera to one of the ones outside his room, and saw the missing rabbit on one side, and, switching to the other camera, found the bird on the other. They were both glaring into their respective cameras… and _twitching_.

Well, maybe "twitching" wasn't the right word for it. Twitching was what Wheatley did right now, sparks shooting out of the corner of his constricted optic. The androids, meanwhile, were making erratic, jerky movements every few seconds.

And they did _not_ look happy.

With another twitch and a terrified whimper, the core slammed both doors shut before either of the infuriated androids could make it to his room. Hoping to conserve power (and to stop looking at the crazed robots), he switched off the cameras. "O-okay, mates, no need to—to be upset," he stammered. "If you just turn around and—and head back toward the stage, everything'll be j-just… just fine."

_In my bloody dreams_ , he thought gloomily, pulling himself into his casing and casting nervous glances at the windows. After hesitating for a few seconds, he flicked his flashlight toward the east window and gave a strangled gasp at the sight of a beak full of far too many teeth. Twitching over to the other window, he could see the shadowed optics of the rabbit staring down at him.

"G-go away," he whimpered, shutting off his flashlight and closing his optic. "Goawaygoawaygoawaygoaway…"

It took a few agonizing minutes, but eventually he heard the _clank, clank, clank_ of retreating footfalls as the two androids left his booth.

Heaving an artificial sigh, Wheatley opened both his optic and the doors. "Well, _that's_ over," he muttered, knowing that was far from the case. "Let's see how our other android friend is doi— _OI_! Get back in there!"

The android of Pirate Cove was now poking its head out of the curtains, its glowing optics staring straight into the camera. But just below its head was something giving off an occasional spark—the part that had been damaged.

"Yeah, I see it, mate," Wheatley growled, trying and failing to mask his fear with anger. "You'll get the rest of you damaged, too, if y-you don't get back in there!"

The android gave off a particularly nasty spark at that, and Wheatley turned off the camera with a sparking twitch of his own.

It was just past 2 AM, and he was already at _49%._

"Wonderful," he said, resting his faceplate against the bottom of his casing, his handles drooping. "Th-this cannot _possibly_ get any worse…"

_Hehehehehaha…_

Wheatley's servos froze.

He'd heard a lot of terrifying sounds during the two-and-a-half nights he'd been here, but never a sound like _that_. Trembling to the point of nearly knocking himself off his stool, he turned the camera to the stage to find it empty.

"AaaaaAAAAA _AAAAUGH_!" Wheatley screamed, scrambling through the cameras faster than he could actually process the images. "YOU DON'T LEAVE! NOT UNTIL THE BLOODY POWER GOES OUT! AND IT'S STILL ON, MATE! _IT'S STILL ON_!"

Eventually he regained enough of his senses to actually _look_ at the camera feeds he was accessing, but nothing was there. Or, well, the _rabbit_ was there, standing in the backstage area, and the bird was looking around by the bathrooms, but the bear was nowhere to be found.

"Did… did I just _imagine_ that?" he wondered, relaxing a fraction.

_Hehehehaha…_

" _NOPE_! DEFINITELY NOT IMAGINING THINGS!" And immediately he was back to flipping through the cameras, frantically searching for the missing android. As much as he hated to do so, he forced himself to closely study each feed to see if he could find the thing hiding in the shadows somewhere. "C'mon, mate, where are you? You've… you've got to be here somewhere, right? Can't just—just disappear… Can you? Oh gosh, please don't be able to disappear—!"

Wheatley was about to give up when the camera came to the bathroom the bird usually lurked by. He'd already looked there, and hadn't seen the—

Wait.

Looking closer, he spotted something: Inside one of the bathrooms was a dark shadow, its head peering out of one of the doorways. Somehow Wheatley got the feeling that this was _not_ a stray test subject taking a bathroom break, and his suspicions were confirmed when the head suddenly looked up, revealing a pair of white, pinprick optics.

The camera cut to static.

Wheatley _really_ wished he knew a few more curses, because now would have been a tremendous time to use them. But as it was—

"Bloody _heck_ mate this is bloody insane— _mad—_ I can't even keep track of all these bloody robots and their bloody crazy— _RRRGH_!"

As soon as the cameras were back online, he resumed his hunt for the bear, and was rather baffled when he came to a camera with no video feed. Sure there was no visual, but there was a _lot_ of noise there. "O-oi! Get out here w-where I can see you!"

Yet the noises—which sounded like metal objects clanging around—continued to ring out throughout the pitch-dark room.

"You've got to come out of there sometime! Er—wait—um… come out of there from the way you came _in_ , not… not so you'd be closer to my door… Actually, if that's where you were planning on heading, h-how about you just… stay there? Yeah, go ahead and keep clankin' around in there… a-all night."

Even though he couldn't see anything in that camera, he felt too scared to look away, as though the action would cause the killer android to come bolting to his door.

Bolting to his…

Wheatley's camera snapped offline and his aperture constricted to a pinprick.

" _Oh gosh_ ," he whimpered, his voice nearly reaching a pitch his aural sensors could not hear. "Oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh…"

The thought swirled around his head, a harsh taunting voice reminding him _you bloody idiot you forgot to check Pirate Cove, that thing's going to come after you any second now and your door's not even shut_ —

_Twitch_. "It's okay—it's okay—I can sh-shut the door—" He went to access the electromagnetic door to his left. "I-I'll be o—"

_Clunk-clunk_.

" _What._ "

He tried again, and his attempt was met with the same broken sound.

_Clunk-clunk._

"No—" _clunk-clunk_ "—no, no—" _clunk-clunk_ "—that's not—" _clunk-clunk_ "—not—!" _clunk-clunk_.

Shakily looking off to the side, he spotted a few wires sparking from the wall—they'd been severed. When he'd been wasting all that time tracking the bear, something had severed the wires that ran to the door. But what had—

_Ga-a-a-a-aaasp…_

Wheatley's processor blanked.

The sound had come from his room.

If he were human, he wouldn't have been able to breathe. But as it was, his vocal processor emitted a series of noises resembling the sounds of hyperventilation. He sat rooted to his stool, shivering and sparking and generally being too terrified to move. Behind him he could hear the sound of something shuffling around, and he didn't want to know what it was—he didn't want to know, he didn't, but some distant part of him _did_ —he wanted to at least get a glimpse of his fate before he…

Knowing he would regret it, he tipped his faceplate as far back as it would go, and was met with the sight of two white, pinprick optics hovering directly above him.

Two padded hands clamped down on his sides.

Wheatley was screaming before he realized what was even going on, flailing and struggling as much as he could, trying to shake the thing off of him, but it only gripped his casing more tightly. His overtaxed vocal processor hiccupped with a spark, and it was in that gap that he managed to hear a hoarse, stammering croak—the thing was _laughing_.

A shower of sparks exploded somewhere inside him, and he ignored the burning pain, forcing his breaking vocal processor to scream again: "L-LAAA— _krrzzzz_ —DY!" Desperately he redoubled his efforts to struggle away, flailing his handles and squirming in his casing, but only succeeding in knocking the stool out from underneath him. The android's grip held firm. "G-GETKkrkrrrrrrzzME O-OUT OF H-H-H-Hee- _eeeee_ -eeEEERRE!"

He didn't care that he was screaming for _her_ help and if _she_ was listening she didn't show it and the thing holding him was _still laughing_ and—

_StampstampSTAMPSTAMPSTAMP_

Another set of glowing optics set above a gaping, fang-filled maw reared through the doorway, and the android of Pirate Cove reached toward him—

And overwhelmed by everything, Wheatley's processor crashed.

* * *

AIs—with the exception of a few—generally had no concept of time when they were offline, and such was the case for Wheatley.

Thus he had no idea how much time had passed when a surge of electricity bolted him awake. All he knew was that he felt like he'd just come out of the other side of a spinny blade wall, and he did _not_ feel like moving at this point and time. Not that he could, anyway—he noted in dull surprise that he was dangling by the cable that was attached to the wall behind him, since his stool was still on the floor. The lights were on, too, so the power hadn't gone out.

Also, he was still alive. Somehow. That was also a bit of a surprise.

" _Well, moron, I can safely say that you are in an…_ interesting _position._ "

"Y-yeAH I a— _KRRRZ_ —ow."

" _On one hand, you completely failed to watch four androids for a mere six hours._ "

He gave a twitch, not feeling like hurting his broken vocal processor again trying to comment on that.

" _On the other hand, you have survived the night._ "

_Count your blessings, mate._ He shut his optic.

" _I_ should _punish you for failing your job, but I don't think I will._ "

Wheatley blinked his optic open again, trying and failing to look up at the speaker. He'd meant to make a noise of confusion, but all that came out was a static grunt—not that he was _ungrateful_ that she wasn't going to hurt him, but…

" _In fact, given the circumstances, I should praise you._ " There was a pause, as though she was regarding something. " _Access the camera facing Pirate Cove._ "

He really, _really_ didn't feel like doing that right now. But a sudden bolt of pain urged him to comply, and he accessed the cameras again.

Throughout this wing of the facility, all the lights were on ( _They can do that?_ he thought dully), making the place seem _slightly_ lessfrightening. But he saw nothing of interest until he peered through the proper camera, and flinched at seeing the familiar blue curtains drawn back, exposing the android in full light.

Its costume was a rusty red, shredded and torn in places, and it wore a patch over one eye—it was a pirate, wasn't it? Made sense, given the name of the location. Strangely enough, though, it was no longer sparking, as it had been before. He tried to focus through his haze of pain, straining to see what was different. Oh, there—it had been missing a hand before, but now it was replaced with a hook. But why was she—

_Wait._

Though he could not usually feel temperature, Wheatley suddenly felt very cold as he stared at the new appendage on the android.

That wasn't a hook.

The black-and silver metal was crudely bent into a curved shape, and a few wires were poking out of one end of it.

Snapping the cameras offline, he turned his optic up, then down, and his vocal processor gave a glitched, horrified _squawk_ at the sight that greeted him.

"HE STkkKKKkkSTOLE M-MY BLOODY H-H-HA-A-aAN _DLE_!" He swung on the cable, flailing his upper handle and cringing as sparks shot out of the lower part of his casing where his other handle should have been.

" _I told you they would be out for revenge. But don't worry—I think that urge has been satiated._ "

Wheatley finally hung limp, twitching and watching the sparks scatter on the floor beneath him.

" _I suppose that's enough for now. You'll need to be well-rested after that_ experience _in order to function properly at work tomorrow._ "

"T-to _MOoor—_?!"

Before his glitching vocal processor could finish failing at producing that word, the claw appeared to retrieve him, dragging him back to the corrupt core bin—which he undoubtedly belonged to at this point.


	5. The Final Night

"Heh, heh, so ID, tell us again, h-how was your j-job… _hahaha_ …"

"S-space friend?"

"Fact: the ID core is _still_ not talking."

Wheatley retained his deadpan expression.

"C'mon, we just wanna know h-how your day went! We missed it the f-first time!"

He twitched, far too many sparks shooting out of his casing.

"Come on, ID! Y-you can tell us!"

He twitched again, optic narrowing, and finally lifted his faceplate. "I-I-IT wWWwent BLO— _krrrtz_ —ODY Fi-I-I-i-iI—" Another nasty spark shot out of his casing, and his frame racked with a few static-filled coughs.

Rick, meanwhile, was quite literally rolling with laughter, as much as he could with his lower handle still hooked around Fact's. "That's the greatest—g-greatest thing I've heard all week!" the Adventure Core choked out between laughs.

"B-bl— _krrrz_ —dy hi-I-I-I-llllari— _krrrz_ —ous…" Wheatley managed to croak out, shaking his faceplate in annoyance.

He had discovered rather quickly that without his lower handle it was incredibly difficult to sit upright—it could be done, but only with a lot of concentration. So after a while of rolling he had finally tipped onto his side. At least he was _stable_ that way, but unfortunately it meant that he was perpetually facing all the corrupt cores unless he shifted his face and inner mechanisms into some uncomfortable position. And currently, he was treated with the annoying sight of a certain corrupt core's mocking him.

"Stop that," Fact Core demanded, his downturned upper handle giving away the annoyance that his monotone voice could not convey. Rick's rolling was causing him to shift around, the bottom of his casing scraping against the floor.

"Make me, pinky!" Rick growled, dropping his laugh to glare at the other core.

"If you insist." And Fact jerked himself backward, yanking Rick forward and causing the two cores' faceplates to collide with a _CLANG_. "Fact: _ow_."

"A-at l-l-lea— _krrrrtz_ —st you hHHHAve l-lower ha— _krrrz_ —dles," Wheatley grumbled. He felt a light tap at his side, and glanced over to see that Space Core had scooted himself closer and was attempting what Wheatley could only assume was a consoling pat with his upper handle.

"It's okay s-space friend!"

Wheatley gave a slight smile.

"H-handle will—g-grow back!"

 _Plink, plink_. "R-really?" he asked, optic widening in amazement. "W-w-EEll, th-A-A-At's g-good to kn-kn— _krrrrtz_."

"But your voice will not recover without repairs," came Fact's muffled voice.

Wheatley's face plate clunked against the floor, and he gave a groan of despair.

"Quit your belly-aching!" Rick said, pushing himself away from Fact's faceplate. "I think it's an improvement."

The broken core's optic swiveled in Rick's direction. "Y-y-YEA— _KRRRZ—_ " _Twitch._

"Sure. It actually makes you _shut up_ sometimes! HAHAHAHA—!"

Attempting a growl and winding up making a static hiss instead, Wheatley spun his faceplate and fixed Rick with a glare. "You-U-u-U-U wouldn— _KRRRTZ_ be lAUghing if-f-f-f _you_ work-k-ked th-this blooOOOdy j— _KRRRTZ_."

"You're nothin' but a sissy, ID!" Rick countered with a roll of his optic. "Any core with _half_ your processing power could do _that_ job. It doesn't even require _muscles_! Which _I_ have, by the way." He flexed his upper handle, smacking Fact in the optic and sending the core's inner casing spinning.

"I-I'm _not_ a SI- _krrrrrtz_ —"

"What was that? Not a…?"

"I'm— _KRRRRTZ_ —a s-sissy!"

"Oh, so you admit it! _HAHAHAHA_!"

When Fact Core straightened out his casing, he looked like he would have very much liked to smack his lower handle against his faceplate.

Wheatley would have very much liked to do the same, but, lacking a lower handle, he flipped himself over in his casing to face the back wall instead.

"Space friend o-okay?"

The broken core's vocal processor replied with a bark of static, and he left it at that.

"Don't pay any mind to him, Space. He's just sore 'cause he doesn't have the guts or brains to do his job properly."

"Cores do not have guts or brains."

"Yeah? Well I got _both_ , alongside some killer muscles—"

"You do not have muscles. You have a handle that you smacked me in the face with."

"Want me to do it _AGAIN_?!"

Wheatley was pretty sure the four of them were growing more corrupt by the second at this point.

So it came as almost a relief to him after a voice finally spoke up from the omnipresent speakers: " _Well, I hope you've enjoyed a nice, peaceful rest among your fellow lunatics._ "

"Yeah! Lunatics! Crazy! C-crazy about _space_!"

Wheatley dully glanced up at the ceiling.

" _How is your vocal processor holding up?_ "

"F-faaan— _krrrrtz_ —bloo-o-o-o-dy—ta-a-a— _KRRRRTZ_ —stic." He twitched.

" _That's what I thought. How fortunate that your voice is not necessary for your job_. _If it were, you would probably be dead._ " She paused. " _Though you'll probably die regardless._ " As usual, her claw reached down from the ceiling to grab him. " _Anyway, back to work._ "

The claw clamped around his frame, and Wheatley wasn't all that sorry to leave.

* * *

Until he got to the office.

As soon as he was brought into the dimly-lit room, the fear came back to him—he was back _here_ again, trapped for six hours with these killer androids that had mutilated him just last night—what was to stop them from doing that _again_? He couldn't move or run from them, or just ignore them—oh, he would rather deal with three annoying cores taunting him than four terrifying androids stalking him…!

And to make matters worse—

"L—laa—a-a—DY!" he yelped as the claw set him on the stool, and he immediately lost his balance, rolling backward off the perch.

Graciously the claw replaced him. " _Oh, I'm sorry. It appears that without your lower handle, you'll have a more difficult time balancing on your seat._ "

Wheatley looked up at the speaker with an expression somewhere between hope and desperation. "Y-y-EA- _KRRrrrrz_ … C-can you—"

"I suppose you'll just have to be _extra_ careful, then."

He twitched and his remaining handle drooped. _So much for that_. When the claw let go again he made a conscious struggle to keep himself from rolling, his inner mechanisms starting to work overtime.

As stupid as Wheatley was, he had at least picked up on a pattern at this point—every time he was brought here, _she_ would announce some new, horrible thing for him. "S-so… wh- _krrrtz_ —is it-it-it th-this time?"

" _Hm?_ "

"Wh-wha-a-AT is n-new?"

" _You were honestly expecting me to tell you every night? I thought you might like a nice_ surprise _every once in a while._ "

Wheatley gave a yelp that glitched into something between a turret's cry and a radio's screeching.

" _So I'll leave you to it. I'd advise you get started checking those cameras, since while we've been talking, the clock has ticked past midnight, and the androids have become active. Have fun._ "

 _Beep_.

Optic contracting, he scrambled with the cameras to access the one facing the show stage, only to find that the rabbit was already gone. He would have _very_ much liked to shout a few unsavory things at GLaDOS, but he couldn't think of any in his panic, and his glitching vocal processor probably would have rendered them indecipherable anyway.

"Bloody ridi-i-i-i-i—" His voice broke off with a twitch, and he nearly lost balance. _That rabbit is the_ worst _,_ he thought as he switched through the cameras to find it. He finally checked the backstage camera and gave a choked cry at seeing it with its face right against the camera.

The permanent smiles on the animal masks made it difficult to tell, but if Wheatley didn't know any better, he would have _sworn_ that thing was grinning at him.

It was the same expression it had been making last night, when it…

Wheatley shuddered and turned off the camera. "If-f I d-dreamed, tha— _KRRTZ_ —thing w-would give mE nightm— _krrrrtz_." That was one good thing—he didn't sleep. Yes, count your blessings—that's what he would have to do. A lot of bad things were happening, so he should think about all the bad things that _weren't_ happening.

 _No nightmares, no screaming androids at the moment, um…_ He narrowed his optic in thought. _And… um… no… no financial troubles._ Blinking, he shrugged his upper handle. _I'm not getting paid, so a low pay check'd be the icing on the bloody cake_. He rolled his faceplate.

Flipping the camera back on, he looked at the stage to find that the bird was now gone as well. Wonderful. It wasn't even 1 AM yet, and those two were already out and about. "Th-this cAN't p-possi- _krrtz_ —g-get any w—"

Wheatley's vision flickered.

"WHA-A-a-a-A—" He jumped almost completely backward, mechanisms whirring audibly as he tried to restabilize himself, his vocal processor emitting a static-filled panting noise. That hadn't been the camera—that was his _optic_. First his vocal processor, then his lower handle, now his _optic_? What next? Was his auditory sense going to go screwy too?

As if on cue, his vision flickered yet again, visions of glaring androids flashing before him, accompanied by a low robotic mumble.

" _N-NOTE TO BL—KRRRTZ—DY SELF_ —D-DO _NOT_ T-T-t-TEMPT f-ATE!" he wailed, snapping his optic shut until the visions passed. _She_ was doing this on purpose— _she_ had to be! "I-is _this_ the sur- _krrrtz_ -prize you w-were talking ab—" _Twitch, spark._

Unless this wasn't _her_ , and this was actually something the androids were doing… but _why_? Were they _trying_ to drive him bonkers or something? Maybe—maybe if they drove him over the brink, he would be easier for them to tear apart, and—

He shuddered. "O-okay, pull y-y-yourself t-together," he whispered, pulling up the camera again. All he had to do was watch the androids for another—what—five hours, and then he would be taken back to the corrupt core bin. It was so much better than here…

The camera focused on Pirate Cove, and Wheatley gulped at the sight of the android there pulling aside the curtain with its shiny new hook. Well, actually, no, it was _not_ shiny or new, because it was _his_ former handle. _Hope you bloody enjoy that, mate_ , he thought, glaring a little. _You're not getting_ this _one_. Switching off the camera, he looked up, indicating his own handle with a wave. It was all he had left—if he lost _that_ , he'd be nothing more than a bloody _football_. A _metal_ football. One for those androids to kick around. Maybe they would hurt their feet doing that—he hoped so.

…What was he doing again?

Blinking, he shook himself out of his completely off-track thoughts and focused instead on the time. It was past 1 AM, at least, though he wasn't so sure just how far past 1 AM it was. Why did these clocks only give the hour, anyway? Clocks usually told the minutes, and seconds, and… nano… micro… hours, or something.

But at least he'd gone an hour without being attacked, right?

 _Hehehahaha_ …

"WhAT?!" Wheatley cried, voice warping to a higher pitch as he switched his camera to the stage. Of _course_ it was empty. "N- _no_! You— _krrrtz_ —I-I d-IDN't g- _krrrtz_ -ive you p-permISSIOn to l-l-l-leave the st-stage!"

Not that these androids needed permission to do _anything_ —no, they just waltzed around wherever they liked, stealing parts off of an already-helpless core. It was… it was bloody unethical, that's what it was. Unethical and… probably illegal. He'd report them to the authorities for sure, if the authorities weren't _GLaDOS_.

Wheatley's optic spun, and he gave a pained twitch. His thoughts were getting disorganized—more so than usual. The stress of this was getting to him, and he was honestly a little surprised he hadn't cracked yet. Surprised, but not ungrateful—he would very much like to keep his sanity, even if he couldn't keep his life.

Switching the camera to the dining area, he flinched at seeing a pair of glowing white eyes staring at him from a dark corner. "H- _hello_!" he squeaked, flinching. "G-g-good to s— _krrtz_ —you're getting y-y-yOUR exers— _KRRRRTZ_." He twitched again, and cringed as his vision flickered—he couldn't keep an eye on this stupid android if his vision kept doing this. "S-st-stay rIGHt the-e-e-e-ere—!"

He closed the camera and shook his faceplate, trying to rid himself of the visions that were attacking him yet again. They were images of androids, but something was off about them…

Not wanting to find out just what that was, he turned the camera to Pirate Cove, trying to focus through the flickering images so he could see the android there. Strange, though, that as hard as he tried, he couldn't seem to see any hint of the thieving robot…

_StampstampstampSTAMPSTAMP…_

The word Wheatley shouted was not one that could be found in the dictionary, but he was too scared out of his mind to care. The electromagnetic door to his left slammed shut, and immediately he heard the _bang, bang, bang_ of the android's pounding on the door, as well as the grating _screech_ of metal-on-metal as the thing dragged its hook over the barrier.

Wheatley contributed to these noises with a terrified whimper as he pulled himself as far into his casing as he could go, keeping his remaining handle clenched in a vice grip over his body. All the while, the visions continued to assault him, the killer androids appearing and disappearing before him, their optics narrowed maliciously… and suddenly he could tell what was wrong with them.

One optic was white, the other blue.

"NO!" he screamed, shutting both his optic and the other door. "Y-Y-YOU'RE N— _KRRTZ_ —NOT G-G-G-gett-ING M-M-MY OPTIC! Y-YOU'VE G-GOT T-T- _TWO_ OF Y-O-O-O-OooooUUR BL— _KRRRTZ_ —DY OWN!" His artificial, useless breathing made him sound like he was hyperventilating before that degenerated into whispers of static. It was only then that he realized that the pounding at his door had stopped, it was past 2 AM, and he was already below _50%_ power.

Part of him wondered if this wing of the facility's power was tied to his own, because suddenly he felt rather drained. His internal mechanisms finally gave up on the effort of keeping him balanced, and he tipped to his side.

He wasn't going to survive the night, was he?

With a slight twitch, he opened the doors and turned on his flashlight, straining to see out into the hallways. Both were empty, but they probably wouldn't stay that way for long.

_Hehehaha…_

"O-oh for—" his voice broke off into static, and he searched the cameras for the rogue bear again. It was hard to spot since apparently it was quite fond of hiding in the shadows. After switching back and forth between cameras for a while, he was starting to wonder if this was even worth it—if it would somehow help him to play hide-and-seek with the bear even as his power steadily drained. Part of him was tempted to just give up and shut the doors, hoping they would last until the clock struck 6, but with four—no—three hours left and only 39% remaining, he really doubted it.

A faint whispering sounded from outside his room, and with a gasp the core flicked on his flashlight and shone it in the right door.

The bird's optics were dark save for the flickering white pinpricks, and it was hunched visibly, moving toward the door in an unnatural, erratic shamble.

 _To heck with the power_. Wheatley shut the door, his own optic a shuddering pinprick as he stared at the window, waiting for the bird to rear its terrifying head again.

An unearthly _shriek_ sounded from the opposite side, and he swung his flashlight in that direction just in time to see the rabbit grab at its purple mask and tear it away, exposing the bare, twitching endoskeleton head beneath.

The other door crashed downward, and Wheatley twitched, his sparks briefly lighting the dim room. Wondering if either of those things had actually happened, he glanced at the hall cameras. Each showed the two androids staring up at him, their heads twitching erratically. But at the same time, he _swore_ he could still hear them scratching at the doors. What was real? What wasn't? Did it even matter anymore?

He twitched again and gave a strangled gasp when he saw the bear in front of him, its suit yellowed with age, but with another twitch, it was gone. There were still androids at both doors, whispering and mumbling and scratching, and there were ones in the hallway, waiting. His vision flickered and blurred again and the pirate was in his room, the stolen handle outstretched so close to him that he could count the wires sticking out. With a blink, it was gone.

The visions came and went, the androids clawed at the door, and Wheatley's attention turned to the accusing _8%_ in the corner of his vision. This was it—he was really going to die here—there was no way out, this job was really going to kill him—this—

…Wait.

A thought struck him, and he was too dazed with terror to tell just how ludicrous it was. But what did he have to lose at this point?

"LA-A-A-ADY!" he cried, fighting with his broken vocal processor. "I'VE G-GOT SOME N-N-E-E-e-e-e-e-EWS F-FOR Y— _KRRRTZZzzzz_ …"

No, no, focus, he had to speak clearly, just this once—

" _I QUIT_!"

At first he thought it hadn't worked, and he almost gave into despair when an audible _hum_ filled the entire wing, giving way into silence.

" _You what?_ "

Wheatley tipped completely off of his stool, giddy with excitement as he swung from the cable he was connected to. "I-IT WORK—I-I m-m-mean, yES! I q-qui-i-i-i— _krrrtz_ …"

" _Really._ "

" _YES_!" he cried, twitching and showering the floor with sparks.

" _But you have such a_ promising _future here_."

Wheatley was about to argue that being used for parts didn't sound all that promising to him, but she went on:

" _It's_ much _better than the fate that awaits you if you_ give up."

Wheatley made a glitched scoffing noise that sounded more like an electronic bark than anything else. "Y-y-y-EAH ri-i-i-ight, m-mate! Wh-whAT c-could p-possi— _krrrtttz_ —be w-worse?"

* * *

It was amazing, really, how quickly Wheatley could regret a decision.

One moment he was in a moldy office, wishing he were _out_ of there—somewhere where it wasn't dark, where killer androids weren't threatening to rip him apart, where he wasn't perpetually scared out of his mind…

And the next moment he _was_ out of there, immediately wishing he hadn't wished he was away from that wing—where there weren't lights so bright they hurt his optic, where there were no constant cries of dying turrets, and where he was not on fire.

His systems retched in racking coughs as smoke sputtered out of his casing, and the bottom of his casing still smarted from when he'd banged against a surface of rusted metal after _she_ had thrown him here, into the incinerator. The metal held him above the fire, but that didn't stop the flames from occasionally lapping his casing and inexplicably setting him aflame. He rolled in his casing until the fire was out, but it would start again in a few minutes.

"A-at l-l-leaST it's oo-o-o-only a b-bloody yEAr of th-this," he stammered. "C-can't g-get any w—"

_CLANG._

_CLANG._

"THE SUN! Are we in the sun?!"

"F-f-fact: the current temperature is three thousand nine hundred and twenty-seven-point-oh-eight Kelvin."

"O-oh bloody _h-heck_ ," he groaned, rolling his optic away from the other cores.

" _I've been told that misery loves company, but I haven't had the chance to test the veracity of that statement until now. So I suppose your change of employment wasn't a total waste. Thanks for that._ "

Wheatley twitched his optic upward, and, failing to find the speaker, turned to look at his new incinerator-mates instead. "Y-y-you are th-the _perfect_ blo-o-o-o-ody coma _krrrrtz_ …"

"SPACE FRIENDS!" Space Core cried, seemingly unaware of the flames that danced around him.

"Only 27.2% of misery loves company," Fact Core droned, shaking the soot off of his face.

Wheatley winced, waiting for the third core to begin mocking him again… then blinked, turning his optic this way and that. "Er… g-guys?" he asked, and the two cores turned to face him.

"Wh-where's Rick?"

* * *

" _It's fortunate you were around when the previous security guard found employment… elsewhere._ "

He twitched his half-lidded optic up to the speaker in the corner before looking at the musty room around him again. He didn't have any olfactory sensors, but if he did, he was sure this room would've smelled like _adventure_. "Fortunate ID admitted to being a _pansy_ ," he said with a swagger.

" _So you understand your duties here?_ "

"Watch the power and keep those killer androids in their place. If any of 'em gets too close, I'll _karate-chop_ them back to the stage!"

" _That's what I thought._ "

The speaker went offline, the clock struck twelve, and Rick opened up the camera.

How difficult could it be?


End file.
